GODZILLA (2014) is a Respectable Upgrade Over 1998's Previous Failed American Remake

A short review of Gareth Edward’s pretty good (though not faultless) Godzilla update for Legendary Pictures’ MonsterVerse.

“This alpha predator of yours, doctor… do you really think he has a chance?”
“The arrogance of men is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around. Let them fight.”

Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla has the major advantage of being a bajillion times better in almost every way than the previous dismal dud that was Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla. Because sure, while Emmerich’s version of an American Godzilla movie may have been shot on the ideal format of 35mm film, and had more practical effects than Edwards’ CGI-heavy digital vision, Edwards still managed to outdo those superficial strengths and gain the upper hand by taking Toho’s eponymous beastie seriously, having superior control of the appropriate tone for the story, wielding a fantastic eye for scale and atmosphere, and most importantly, not making the baffling creative decision of asking the creature designers to make Godzilla “sexy”, like Emmerich so bizarrely did with his film. (Like, seriously, was Roland Emmerich a scalie before the word even existed? Discuss.)

Unfortunately, Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla now has the major disadvantage of utterly paling in comparison to the robust triumph that is Godzilla Minus One, which just blows his film right out of the water like a sea-mine set off by a machine gun. Between the two films, there’s simply no contest when the latter film has any say in the matter. There’s no shame in this defeat; it’s just the facts. (He says with unfounded authority about the inherently subjective medium of art, where facts and objectivity are but an illusion.)

Even so, when the visuals in Godzilla (2014) are at their best (the HALO jump!), they are skin-pricklingly magnificent to behold, as Edwards repeatedly conjures scintillating goosebumps through his marriage of awestruck camerawork to impeccable sound design, weighty visual effects, and the sublime music, courtesy of Alexandre Desplat going full beast mode with his astonishingly epic score.

Sometimes, that’s all you need.

(Still, what a waste of Juliette Binoche and Bryan Cranston. An old complaint endlessly made about the film all the time, I know, but that doesn’t make it any less true…)

Originally published January 15th 2024 at https://letterboxd.com.